Why is your broadband speed never as fast as your operator says?

According to some users, in order to improve the experience, they chose 300M or 500M broadband networks, but the network speed was not as fast as they imagined, and the fastest download speed was only 50-60M.

In fact, this is a common problem. To put it simply, the network speed unit "M" provided by the operator is different from the speed unit "M" commonly seen in our lives. Although they are both read as "megabytes" in spoken language, there are actually big differences.

The "M" of the operator stands for Mbps

Internet speed is a more common and popular term, while the professional name is "bandwidth", which can be simply understood as the maximum data rate of this broadband, and the commonly used unit is Mbps.

It is the abbreviation of Megabits per second, which is a unit of transmission rate, referring to the number of bits transmitted per second.

Bit, also called bit, is represented by lowercase "b" in English, that is, bit.

Taking a 300M bandwidth network as an example, its maximum data transmission rate per second is 300Mbps.

The common "M" in daily life is MB/s

Whether it is the real-time speed displayed on the mobile phone or the speed displayed in the download software, the common download speed in life is measured in MB/s.

MB/s stands for megabytes per second, which refers to the number of bytes transferred per second.

However, B is not b.

The capital B stands for byte; the lowercase b stands for bit, and 1 byte = 8 bits, so 1B = 8b.

Taking a 300M bandwidth network as an example, the theoretical maximum download speed when downloading using this network environment is: 300÷8=37.5, where the unit used is MB/s.

There are still a few things to know

As long as you understand the 8-fold difference between B and b, you will never question your network or complain to the network operator again.

However, due to network transmission loss and other reasons, whether it is 300M or 500M bandwidth, the actual rate reaching the user end will have a certain loss. Generally, as long as it reaches more than 90% of the theoretical value, it meets the standard. This needs to refer to the specific regulations of each operator.

In addition, the maximum WiFi speed of some old routers is only 300M, so if you are using 500M or Gigabit broadband, don't forget to upgrade the router.

Not only routers, but also some people save trouble by using the remaining network cables (twisted pair) from the old router even if they buy a new one. In fact, network cables also have standard specifications (with different upper limits on transmission rates), and it is best to use Category 5e or Category 6 network cables.